I'm dying to dye my dies..
I had a conversation with a friend recently over IM, and I thought it was worth sharing. It came up that I couldn't rememeber the difference my fourth grade teacher had made between dieing and dying -- and which to use with death ("the cessation of life"). After a bit of Googling, we couldn't find ANYTHING! A little investigative work of dictionary.com cleared it up for us:
1) There's die, like .. coffin, mortuary, maggots and stuff.
2) There's dye, like .. painting and coloring and stuff.
3) There's die, like .. making coins.. the metal press.
So, if you're talking about (1) You die -- you've died or you're dying.
And if you're talking about (2) You dye -- you've dyed or you're dyeing.
Finally, if you're talking about (3) You die -- you've died or you're dieing.
-- That's my understanding from the dictionary entries. It'll help me clear up my eulogy.. unless I was punching out metal, I was dying and not dieing. And if I'm in a coffin, I died, not dyed.. unless I was painting something. Hopefully I don't die while dyeing or dieing; then I'll either have dyed dies or some pocket change.
Yep!
